Awesome and helpful information for authors! I’m going to check this app out!
A List of Things to Look Forward To — Or Please Be Over Winter #wintersux #summercomesoon
Below is a list of things I soothe myself with while getting ready to exit the house in the mornings. The miserable cold is only bearable when I can envision a future without it. So…here we go.
1. No Socks. Ladies and gentlemen, the day I get to just wear sandals again will be an awesome one. Socks are devils tools because:
a) You can never find a matching set even though you only buy the exact same sock design over and over and over. It’s a friggin’ mystery.
b) They don’t seem to make the right size for me, being either too big or too small. Because half the time I end up wearing my daughters’ socks and the other half my husbands’ (because the ones I buy myself inevitably go missing within 24 hours of purchase) my feet are never comfortable. Too big socks lead to them being cold, too small socks lead to swelling in my ankles.
c) Laundry! They are just another thing to wash! And there are never any clean ones when you really need a pair even though you own literally two hundred pairs of socks.
2. SUMMER DRESSES!!!! This is the thing I can’t wait for. No more constricting, constraining, totally-covering-my-skin-yet-still-failing-to-keep-me-warm and somehow-always-unfashionable winter clothes! Instead I’ll wear my beloved comfortable, (kinda) fashionable, always easy summer dresses. Holy God, I love them so much. Let me show you my absolute favorite. It’s the Nectar dress by Athleta, though they discontinued it (assholes!) and now I have to buy it on Ebay. I own like six in different colors/patterns. Because it is perfection.
I have literally never met a person who didn’t look good in that dress. Any size, shape, whatever. It’s the best dress to ever exist.
I have other summer dresses, too, and I love them all so much. Even my least loved summer dress is 1000% better than my favorite winter outfit.
That’s it. Really, that’s as far as I get before I’m out the door in the mornings. I admit I spend a long, long, long time on the summer dresses part of the thought process. But, seriously, do we need another reason to want summer to come like whoa? I think not.
“This author has got me hook, line and sinker.” 17thSassenach’s review of Training Season #gay #romance
“This author has got me hook, line and sinker. I am in love with this book. I was up half the night last night finishing it and Matty and Rob are still with me this morning. I can’t let go of them. Matty, in particular, has taken up permanent residence in my heart. A fictional character! The light and shadow that the author used to paint Matty was, in my opinion, perfection and made him seem so real. I saw that there will be another book.. I just hope a person can’t die of anticipation because I would be a goner.”
via Amazon.com: 17thSassenach’s review of Training Season.
Training Season is available now at:
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And now at KOBO.
Sweden’s Moonbabies Releases First Album in Seven Years on April 28 | Green Light Go Music PR #music #thebest
I cannot even express how excited I am that Moonbabies have a new album coming out. Oh my God, you guyssss. So excited!
Back when I was pregnant and often overwrought with insane hormones, my husband would put on The Orange Billboard, Moonbabies’ second album, and within moments of the opening notes, I’d find myself happier, calmer, and able to cope. “I love this album,” I’d say to him. And he’d say, “I know.”
When my daughter was three At the Ballroom was released and it became the happy-day album for our whole family.
I can’t wait to see what Wizards On the Beach will bring!
“Moonbabies’ first album in seven years, Swedish husband and wife duo Ola Frick and Carina Johansson Frick will release Wizards on the Beach on April 28, 2015 on their imprint label, Culture Hero. The album explores a sense of Salvador Dali surrealism and vibrant dream pop rich in introspective shades, melodic hues, hazy instrumental washes and technicolor electronic explosions.
The release of Wizards on the Beach reflects a buoyancy upon coming to the light at the end of the tunnel where each note feels like a diamond refracting into a rainbow of colors upon the aural spectrum. A tunnel with many turns and valleys, the album’s underlying themes are subliminally centered around the musicians being caught in a cycle of feeling stuck, wanting to be anywhere but the present situation, and throughout the recording process coming out on the other side to a field of dreamlike possibility envisioned through the completed album. Ola Frick expands on the meaning of the album and the personal battles, “It’s our way of seeing our hellish years where we almost lost the battle of our dreams, but we stood strong and fought like wizards against all odds and managed to get through it with something great and magical. The Beach is the dream-state, the utopia, the narnia, the place where you can take your mask off and just be.”
Read more via Sweden’s Moonbabies Releases First Album in Seven Years on April 28 | Green Light Go Music PR.
One of my favorite songs from The Orange Billboard:
Smoky Mountain Dreams! Want to know what Gatlinburg is like? Now you can experience it yourself! :D #gatlinburg #extras
I didn’t actually have to watch this video myself in order to write about Gatlinburg since I’ve been there many times over the course of my life. In fact, my folks used to take my brother and I up there as kids for little day trips on random weekends. I actually wrote about 50% of Smoky Mountain Dreams during a week’s stay in Gatlinburg in June of 2014 and went to Puckers and a few other places to make sure I got the descriptions right in the book. (By the way, there is a lingering shot of the Puckers sign at the end of this video.)
I wouldn’t say this is the best video of Gatlinburg. For one thing there is that unfortunate red truck blocking the view of a lot of it. I much prefer the video I posted earlier this month. I think it gives a better feel for the place. But I do think this gives one an idea of the landscape and the crowds and the way the traffic flows through there (and why Christopher is always taking shortcuts). It’s a busy little place akin to, say, Daytona Beach in the mountains in terms of quality of shopping experience and type of crowds. It might even be described as trashy. I’m okay with that. 🙂
So here you go! Complete with a Dolly Parton song! 😀
Christopher Ryder and Jesse Birch are two men hanging on to the past. While Christopher has let go of his failure as a country singer in Nashville, he’s still trying to please his narrow-minded, non-accepting family. His beloved Gran loves him the way he is, but Christopher feels painfully invisible to everyone else. He’s happy enough performing at the Smoky Mountain Dreams theme park in Tennessee, but even when Christopher is center stage he aches for someone to see the real him.
There’s more than meets the eye when it comes to bisexual Jesse. He’s raising two kids and fighting with family after a tragic accident took his children’s mother. There’s no room in his life for dating, his kids are his priority, and he doesn’t want more than an occasional hook-up. He sure as hell doesn’t want to fall hard for his favorite local singer, but when Christopher walks into his jewelry studio, Jesse hears a new song in his heart.
Smoky Mountain Dreams is available now at:
AMAZON
B&N
SMASHWORDS
iTUNES
SCRIBD
OYSTER
And now at KOBO.
A Drive Through Cades Cove — Smoky Mountain Dreams #bonus #extras
In Smoky Mountain Dreams, Jesse and Christopher have an afternoon picnic at Cades Cove near Gatlinburg. I’m attaching someone’s film of a drive through Cades Cove. I’ve tried to make the link of this video go to the interesting part (23:23) because the first bit is rather dull and you can’t see much. But the later parts are lovely.
Also here is a link to Wikipedia to explain what an Appalachian Cove is. It’s different from a cove near water. 🙂
Christopher Ryder and Jesse Birch are two men hanging on to the past. While Christopher has let go of his failure as a country singer in Nashville, he’s still trying to please his narrow-minded, non-accepting family. His beloved Gran loves him the way he is, but Christopher feels painfully invisible to everyone else. He’s happy enough performing at the Smoky Mountain Dreams theme park in Tennessee, but even when Christopher is center stage he aches for someone to see the real him.
There’s more than meets the eye when it comes to bisexual Jesse. He’s raising two kids and fighting with family after a tragic accident took his children’s mother. There’s no room in his life for dating, his kids are his priority, and he doesn’t want more than an occasional hook-up. He sure as hell doesn’t want to fall hard for his favorite local singer, but when Christopher walks into his jewelry studio, Jesse hears a new song in his heart.
Smoky Mountain Dreams is available now at:
AMAZON
B&N
SMASHWORDS
iTUNES
SCRIBD
OYSTER
And now at KOBO.
Smoky Mountain Dreams
Wonderful review of Smoky Mountain Dreams!
(Seattle) punk is dead, long live punk | Ajax Bell #punk #80s
“I have been having a hard time describing 1982 punks in my book. I feel like I’m describing them accurately, albeit somewhat from memory, and they just aren’t enough. They aren’t loud enough, they aren’t bright enough, they aren’t rowdy enough. And then I found these videos and discovered I was spot on in my descriptions. The problem is what was so punk and so out there in 1982 is just the usual stuff today. Those punks back then? We’re all in our 40s and 50s now, and some of us don’t dress any different than we did 25 or 35 years ago. My fictional punks seemed too mainstream because who they are is mainstream now. But it meant something then, and now I know my task as a writer: it isn’t to comically describe those punks as bright, loud, and brash as they were, it’s to describe that world 33 years ago and how different it was from ours now, because only against that background will how outrageous those punks were really stand out.”
Absolutely fascinating blog post about punk in the 80s. Read more via (Seattle) punk is dead, long live punk | Ajax Bell.
Why my books don’t cost 99 cents #pricing #truth
“I haven’t crunched the actual numbers, but let’s assume a novel is about 100-300 hours of work (I’m pretty sure that a historical novel, with all the research and fact-checking is a lot more than that) and you do manage to sell those 6,700 copies and do make $2,000 for a book. If you average the production time (200 hours), that would be a theoretical $10/hour (before tax, before cost like internet connection, heating, research books). That’s about £6/hour. Minimum wage in the UK is £6.50/hr, while London “living wage” (how much you need to cover living costs in London) is £7.85/hr.
Now, I’ve made more making sandwiches at gas stations (EUR 9/hr), which required about a 30-minute training. Yes, everybody can write, but to write something other people want to read takes tens of thousands of hours of practice, which isn’t paid and incurs quite a bit of cost as well. I’d estimate if you’re working very hard and have access to mentoring and how-to books, it will still take 3-7 years to train yourself to become a writer who can write a decent story. I’ve been writing and learning for 20+ years.
And we often forget all the other hours an author spends on supporting their books and being available to readers: answering reader emails, blogging, paying out of pocket for print books for giveaways, swag, attending conferences, postage and admin for sending signed print books around the world, responding and being present on social media, responding to thousands of messages and questions overall. All those are hours not spent writing or doing a day job. I believe they have value.”
read more via Aleksandr Voinov – Letters from the Front: Why my books don't cost 99 cents.
“That’s called being a great storyteller.” – Review: Smoky Mountain Dreams — by Leta Blake #gay #amreading
“I love the risks that Blake takes in her writing. Things don’t all end Disney-like, we get realistic (yet happy) endings and our characters go through some shit to get through to the end. That’s called being a great storyteller.”
Psychopathia Sexualis – and other filthy books of 1900 | Darrah Glass #research #sex
“Toward the end of A Most Personal Property, Henry and Martin have a conversation about what sorts of dirty stories they’ve read. Henry tells Martin about the excerpts James read him from Psychopathia Sexualis, and Martin relates the following:
“Oh, there was a book, Sir, that we all read in secret, though our teachers must have known we had it. I don’t know what it was called because the cover was missing—as were some of the pages, for that matter. It was very dirty, Sir! It was from England, I think, as some of the words were different than we use, and it was about a family who all had sex with one another, mothers and sons, aunts and nephews. I know that feeling you referred to, Sir, excited and sick. You don’t want to like it, but you do, in some deep way, and your prick responds just as it would to something you really want.”
There is an actual book I had in mind when Martin gives that description, and thanks to Project Gutenberg, you can read it, too.”
See more at Martin’s dirty book | Darrah Glass.
“The sex and emotion between these two was off the charts hot and incredible.” This Charming Man by Ajax Bell ~ Crystal’s Many Reviewers
I loved this book so much! Glad to see that Michelle enjoyed it, too. 🙂 (Though I disagree with some of her comments about things she didn’t enjoy as much. I felt like the book was paced just right for a coming-of-age with-a-side-of-love-story as I view this book to be. But that’s what makes reading so cool, huh? To some degree there is no definitive reaction to a book or story. There’s only an individual’s reaction. Yay for diversity in reading/writing!)
“The sex and emotion between these two was off the charts hot and incredible.”
via This Charming Man by Ajax Bell ~ Crystal’s Many Reviewers.
Photos of my writing/research trip to Gatlinburg, TN | Smoky Mountain Dreams Bonus Material #extras
When I went on up to Gatlinburg to work on Smoky Mountain Dreams last June, I took some pictures of the town and my little rented condo. Not all the pics are awesome, but they’re all being shared here. 😀
Driving toward Parkway, there was this view of the mountains through my car windshield.
Driving up the mountain to Gatlinburg.
The little condo.
Oy, this is a bad pic. But I wrote most of the book on that sofa with my feet on that ottoman.
The view out the window. 
Now on to Gatlinburg itself!
The taffy stretcher and piecer.
This is 
This is a thing that exists. For real. 
Puckers!
The chair lift over the creek before it ascends up the mountain.
Because OF COURSE.
The shady drive to my condo.
So, I think what we learned from this is that I’m a shoddy photographer. 😛 And that Gatlinburg is weird. 😀
Ganymede Quartet News! Goals/plans for 2015 | @Darrah_Glass @mmromance
It looks like those of us crazy about the Ganymede Quartet series have a LOT to look forward too! Eeeeeee!!!!
“Finish Ganymede Quartet series. This means the main books plus their accompanying Martin stories. GQ Book 3+Martin story will be out in March 2015. Book 4 will be out in June 2015. I don’t have a schedule for finishing the side stories that will either extend the series timeline or tell side characters’ stories, but I currently have over 20 (!!!) stories extensively outlined (and one basically finished), so I fully expect I’ll complete some of those by the end of the year.
read more about Darrah’s writing plans via Goals/plans for 2015 | Darrah Glass.
That HILARIOUS time someone made Gatlinburg look awesome! #LOL #gatlinburg #lies
This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the most hilarious videos I watched while looking for ways to show readers Gatlinburg in order to add to their experience of reading Smoky Mountain Dreams. Someone made a very lovely video of only the very choicest shopping centers in this tacky little town and put it up like it was a walk in Gatlinburg at night. Hahahaha! No, my sweet readers, this is a walk through one rather quaint shopping center. The rest of Gatlinburg is a hilarious, tacky, flapjack fueled mess. 😀 (That I happen to love very much.)
LIES! This video is LIES. But cute lies.
Upcoming Releases Babble and Waffling On Release Dates
So I had a great email correspondence today that puts another book on my plate for 2015. I’m pretty excited about that and hopefully all will progress smoothly there. This all led to me getting out my Spreadsheet of Doom (nipped from Aleksander Voinov’s spreadsheet he shared once), which lists out all of my Works In Progress and most of my story ideas. This was helpful because now I know what order I need to be working on things (again).
First, and most importantly, I have to finish the Training Season sequel. Despite still being utterly terrified of it, I’m seeing it as an exercise in bravery and giddily diving into the fear, so I feel pretty okay about the chances of me actually getting it done this spring as promised. Secondly, I’m going to work on a joint writing project with Indra Vaughn starting in March. And thirdly I must begin the first draft of the fourth and final book in the upcoming ’90s Coming of Age series. And it’s that series that I’d like to talk about now.
So, when Smoky Mountain Dreams came out, I got a lot of surprised feedback from readers who said they had no idea I had a new book in the hopper, much less being released. I suppose I am publicly rather quiet about my books when I’m working on them. That comes from that veil of terror I was speaking of before. I am so absorbed in trying to keep the car on the road despite the fog before me and the demons of self-doubt flinging themselves at my windshield constantly that I get a bit superstitious about discussing the stories in public.
[By the way, as a long and winding aside, Aleksander Voinov wrote a great blog post recently about limiting beliefs and I think that it really helped me get a grip on some of my own. I’m not sure they aren’t still utterly terrifying, but naming them is interesting and has helped. For example, one of my limiting beliefs is that each book must be better than the last. You can imagine how completely that can paralyze a person, right? Especially when you have people telling you, “Oh, I liked this one, but it wasn’t as good as the other one you wrote.” And especially when that sentiment is expressed about completely different books, so it’s not even consistently the same one whose bar I feel compelled to exceed! LOL! Oh, what a maddening and limiting belief to have. So I vow to just write each book to be the best I can give it and not try to make it as good as some other book I’ve already written. Because I wrote that book already. And this new book will be as good as it is and that’s that. ]
Um, back to the ’90s Coming of Age story. So, I started this series 10 years ago now. I wrote a big, long, huge, and very flawed book. I realized when trying to fix those flaws that it would work better as a series of books, one bleeding right into the next. There are no cliff-hangers, but nothing is ultimately and finally resolved until the end of the fourth book. The series follows a boy named Peter (oh, Peter! my heart! I love you so much!) over the course of his senior year in high school and his freshman year in college. It trails him through very bad choices, very good choices, into the path of lies and out of it, and through the highs and lows of first love, and first hurt, and loss, and recovery. It’s with him while he grows up into a man. Not a perfect man, but a man. It’s a Coming of Age series with heavy romance in it because, well, he mainly grows up through the choices he makes around love and sex and romance. And yes, it’s set in Knoxville during the 1990s.
So, here’s the thing. I’m putting the first book in the series out in September. It is set September through May of Peter’s senior year in high school. The second book is set in the summer, June – August, and if I go with my current release plan, it would come out in November. And that? Bugs me. And that’s my question. Would it bug anyone else? Because THEN if I continue with the plan, a book that is set September – Christmas would come out in February, which just seems all kinds of wrong. And then at the end we’d catch up again, kinda, and release a book set Jan – May in April or so, which seems okay.
But…am I the only one totally weirded out by releasing a book in the “wrong” season? For example, Smoky Mountain Dreams. I couldn’t have released it in June! That would’ve been so weird!
And yet because these books don’t have hard endings to them, but rather soft pauses, I feel like making a reader wait six months to find out what happens next isn’t a great idea either.
Help me Obi Wan Readership, you’re my own hope! 🙂 But seriously, what should I do? Thoughts? Opinions?
“The hype is correct! This book was so amazing!” | Leigh’s review of A Forbidden Rumspringa #gay #amish
“The hype is correct! This book was so amazing!”
via Goodreads | Leigh’s review of A Forbidden Rumspringa.
Southern Accent and Halloween Snow and Gatlinburg Views. LOVE. #extras #smokymountaindreams
I lost so many hours the other day watching random stranger’s vidoes of Gatlinburg on YouTube. I don’t even know why. Heh. I mean, I am doing it to make these blog posts but I know no one is even gonna watch these videos. Still, here’s a favorite. See, we don’t get snow in this area and this is considered insane–snow on Halloween! Highlights of this video: THE ACCENT. I don’t speak like this, but these are examples of how many people in this area sound, including Gareth and others in the book. And the views. <3 Love it.
Christopher Ryder and Jesse Birch are two men hanging on to the past. While Christopher has let go of his failure as a country singer in Nashville, he’s still trying to please his narrow-minded, non-accepting family. His beloved Gran loves him the way he is, but Christopher feels painfully invisible to everyone else. He’s happy enough performing at the Smoky Mountain Dreams theme park in Tennessee, but even when Christopher is center stage he aches for someone to see the real him.
There’s more than meets the eye when it comes to bisexual Jesse. He’s raising two kids and fighting with family after a tragic accident took his children’s mother. There’s no room in his life for dating, his kids are his priority, and he doesn’t want more than an occasional hook-up. He sure as hell doesn’t want to fall hard for his favorite local singer, but when Christopher walks into his jewelry studio, Jesse hears a new song in his heart.
Smoky Mountain Dreams is available now at:
AMAZON
B&N
SMASHWORDS
iTUNES
SCRIBD
OYSTER
And now at KOBO.
How He Became A PROPER LOVER–Review and Get Your Free Book
Love this series, too! <3
Night Owl Reviews TOP PICK Book: Smoky Mountain Dreams “What an excellent book this was!” #gay #reading
So thrilled that Night Owl Reviews chose Smoky Mountain Dreams at a Top Pick! 😀 And the review is absolutely wonderful, too! Thank you!
“My first time reading this author was a huge success. What an excellent book this was.”
read more of the review at Night Owl Reviews via Smoky Mountain Dreams.
BUY AT AMAZON: Smoky Mountain Dreams
